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<b>Decision of Note</b> 'Jersey Boys' Case Focuses On Licensing of Underlying Rights

By Stan Soocher
November 28, 2011

The safest approach to obtaining exclusive rights for uses of a copyrighted work is to procure those rights from all of the copyright's owners. Then how “exclusive” is a license that is obtained from one joint owner of a copyright? Litigation in Nevada federal court involving rights on which the highly successful musical Jersey Boys was allegedly based deals with this very question.

The story underlying the legal case began when Rex Woodard, an attorney and ardent fan of the Four Seasons vocal group, entered into a written agreement with Thomas DeVito, an original Four Seasons member, to write DeVito's autobiography and to equally split income from the work. The 1988 agreement stipulated: “You [DeVito] and I [Woodard] will be shown as co-authors, with you receiving first billing. I will do all of the actual writing, but you will have absolute and exclusive control over the final text of this book.”

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